“Whether you speak it fluently or have never heard it before, you will speak French at the end of your basic training. Basic training aims at teaching a non French speaking recruit a minimum of 500 words of French before he can join his regiment”.

“That is thought by using the system we call binome in the Légion. This meaning that every French speaking recruit is assigned a non speaking recruit to endorse as tutor in the learning of French. During French class and for the entire duration of basic training. Sometimes, depending on the demographics of the section one might be assigned two binome (trinome), I for that matter was assigned a guy from Finland and a guy from South Korea (perks of being a native speaker) . When your binome commits mistakes blatantly related to a poor understanding of basic French, the punishment is collective for you and your binome. Needless to say this accelerates the language learning process significantly”.

The author develops the idea that a software developer is more a gardener who plants plants, instead of beeing a constuctor who builds a building ( in German: “Ein Gärtner der anbaut statt zu bauen” ).